Nearly 200,000 self-employed taxi drivers and transportation workers claim third SEISS grant
Nearly 200,000 self-employed workers in the transportation and storage sector, which includes taxi and private hire drivers, received a SEISS payment worth on average £2,100.
According to the latest statistics, around 5 million individuals were reported as self-employed and had their data assessed for potential Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) eligibility.
In order to be assessed, a self-employed individual needed to have traded in the tax year 2018 to 2019 and submitted a Self Assessment tax return on or before 23 April 2020 for that year.
HMRC identified 3.4 million self-employed individuals as potentially eligible for the SEISS scheme. However, some of the potentially eligible businesses had not been adversely affected by Coronavirus or have ceased trading since the tax year 2018 to 2019 so were not eligible.
By 31 December 2020 1.9 million (57%) of the potentially eligible population had claimed a third SEISS grant with the value of these claims totalling £5.4billion. The average value of a third SEISS claim was £2,800.
Self-employed taxi and private hire drivers fall into a group of individuals associated with the transportation and storage sector. This sector makes up 8% of the potentially eligible population and made 197,000 claims totalling £422million.
A total of 323,000 people working in the transportation and storage sector were assessed for the third SEISS eligibility. Of those 264,000 were identified as potentially eligible for the grant. 59,000 within the sector failed to meet eligibility.
The average claim made in the sector was valued at just £2,100. That’s £700 lower than the average claim value across all sectors.
The transport and storage sector did however have the highest ‘take-up’ rate across all other sectors. 75% of those potentially eligible for the grant claimed the support available.
According to the HMRC statistics of the 1.7 million individuals who were assessed to be ineligible:
86% (1,439,000) had a trading profit that was less than their non-trading income
33% (544,000) had a trading profit £0 or less
11% (186,000) had trading profit exceeding £50,000 per year
3% (68,000) were ineligible for other reasons.
Theses statistics relate to the vital Government SEISS grants that has provided support for self-employed individuals whose business has been adversely affected by Coronavirus (COVID-19).
On the 30 November 2020 applications for the third grant of SEISS opened and have now closed on 29 January.
To have been eligible to make a claim for the third grant, businesses must have had a new or continuing impact from coronavirus between 1 November 2020 and 29 January 2020. The latest third grant is a payment worth 80% of their average monthly trading profits, paid out in a single instalment covering 3 months’ worth of profits, and capped at £7,500 in total.
